"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

Castro's Narco-Terror network gets a free pass

"Iran and Cuba, in cooperation with
each other, can bring America to its knees." ... "The U.S. regime is
very weak, and we are witnessing this weakness from close up." - Fidel Castro, University of Tehran, May 10, 2001 quoted in the Agence France Presse

On March 24, 2015 the government of the United States "removed 45 Cuban companies, individuals and vessels from a sanction list
of entities suspected of supporting terrorism or drug-trafficking," reported the Latin American Herald Tribune. Cuba is a totalitarian regime and all those companies, vessels and individuals are agents of the dictatorship. Not mentioned by EFE or the Associated Press but reported by Reuters was that the majority of the entities removed were:

"most of them dead people, defunct companies or sunken ships. Among them was Amado Padron, a Cuban executed by a firing squad 26 years ago along with Arnaldo Ochoa, a decorated army general who was sentenced to death by Cuba’s communist government after he was found to be connected to international drug trafficking. The U.S. Treasury Department said the delisting was aimed at clearing “out-of-date” names from its list of Specially Designated Nationals."

At the same time EFE reported, in seeming contradiction to what Reuters reported above that:

More than 30 of the 45 companies, individuals and vessels are currently
based in Panama despite having originated in Cuba, while one ship, the Alegria de Pio, is registered in Spain and one company, Travel Services Inc., has its headquarters in the United States.

This action ignores a pattern that stretches back decades linking the Castro regime with terrorism, drug-trafficking and rogue behavior that continues to the present day. Furthermore, it appears that the sanctions list has not been kept up to date which leads to the question: have new entities been added to the list suspected of links to terrorism and drug trafficking? Consider the following:

On March 2, 2015 the government of Colombia had seized a shipment of ammunition
bound for Cuba on a China-flagged ship that was not properly
documented. The BBC reported that
"Officials said about 100 tons of gunpowder, almost three million
detonators and some 3,000 cannon shells were found on board. The ship's
records said it was carrying grain products." First with North Korea in 2013 and now again with China in 2015 the Castro regime has been linked to scandals involving arms smuggling. Blogging by Boz reached
a reasonable conclusion: "Two big shipments of weapons seized in 20
months means that this is probably a regular occurrence." On January 27, 2015 the Spanish newspaper ABC reported that the Castro regime, in collaboration with Venezuela, was providing protection for drug traffickers traveling between Venezuela and the United States. According to news accounts the son of the Cuban ambassador to Venezuela, Germán Sánchez Otero, was using PDVSA planes to smuggle drugs with the United States as the final destination.In 2012 there were reports in the media
of Cuban, Iranian and Venezuelan officials meeting in Mexico to discuss
cyber attacks on U.S. soil allegedly seeking information about nuclear
power plants in the United States. Supposedly the FBI had opened an
investigation into the matter, but there is no mention of this in subsequent U.S. State Department reports.

"Federal prosecutors say Noriega traveled to Havana to ask [Fidel] Castro to
mediate a potentially deadly dispute with top members of Colombia`s
Medellin cocaine cartel. They say the cartel chiefs were upset because a
major drug lab had been seized in Panama despite payment of millions of
dollars in protection money to Noriega. According to the Noriega
indictment, Castro negotiated a peace accord between the cartel and
Noriega at the 1984 meeting. The allegation forms a cornerstone of the
racketeering and drug trafficking charges against Noriega."

"Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple
and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the
emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong–these
are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history.”-
Winston Churchill, May 2, 1935